#georgewbush — Public Fediverse posts
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9/11: The "Official Story" Is a Fairy Tale for Adults
Two planes. Three buildings. A trillion-dollar accounting error. A passport that survived a fireball. If you believe the government's version, you'll believe anything.
Three Towers, Two Planes, One Impossible Physics Problem
Let's start with the simplest fact that no one in the mainstream media wants to explain: on September 11, 2001, two planes hit two buildings, but three buildings fell down.
World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper that was not hit by any plane. It suffered only minor fires and superficial damage. Yet at 5:20 PM that afternoon, it collapsed into its own footprint at virtually free-fall speed — the signature of a controlled demolition.
Building 7 housed the offices of the Secret Service, the CIA, and — most crucially — the US Securities and Exchange Commission. All the files for approximately 3,000 to 4,000 SEC cases, including the Enron scandal, were destroyed in that collapse.
Enron. The biggest corporate fraud in American history. The investigation files. Gone.
And what did the 9/11 Commission Report say about Building 7? Nothing. Not a single word.
If that doesn't make you pause, nothing will.
The "Pull It" Moment
Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center complex, gave an interview for a PBS documentary in which he described the decision-making on September 11. His words: "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."
"Pull it."
In demolition industry terminology, "pull" means to bring a building down with explosives. Silverstein's spokesman later claimed he meant "pull the firefighters out" — but you don't "pull" firefighters. You pull buildings. And Building 7 came down in a textbook controlled demolition.
Six Weeks Before
Here's a detail that should have been on the front page of every newspaper: Larry Silverstein signed the lease for the World Trade Center just six weeks before 9/11.
Six weeks.
And what did he do almost immediately after signing that lease? He negotiated a massive insurance policy — $3.55 billion in coverage, with a clause specifically covering terrorism.
The previous insurance on the property was roughly half that amount. Silverstein reportedly insisted on the terrorism clause. And after the attacks, he went to court arguing that because two planes hit two towers, he should be paid twice — nearly $7 billion.
A man leases a property six weeks before its destruction, quadruples the insurance, adds terrorism coverage, and then argues for a double payout. In any other context, investigators would call that a motive.
The Mastermind in a Cave
The official story tells us that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged "mastermind" of 9/11, coordinated the entire operation from a cave in Afghanistan using a phone and a laptop.
A man on dialysis. In a cave. In one of the most remote regions on Earth. Directing the most sophisticated terrorist attack in history, coordinating 19 hijackers across the United States, managing flight schools, finances, and logistics — all from a cave.
Meanwhile, the hijackers allegedly brought down the World Trade Center with box cutters. Utility knives. Against trained pilots and crew. And they supposedly overpowered the passengers on four separate flights.
If you believe that, you also believe that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers — Satam al-Suqami — survived the fireball explosion that supposedly cremated him, flew out of his pocket, and landed intact on the street blocks away, ready to be found by investigators.
The bodies of hundreds of victims were never recovered. But the hijacker's passport? Pristine.
The President Who Knew
On the morning of September 11, President George W. Bush was at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, reading "The Pet Goat" to a group of second-graders.
He was informed that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He stayed in the classroom for another five to seven minutes.
Later, in December 2001 and again in January 2002, Bush claimed he saw the first plane hit the tower on television before entering the classroom. "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower," he said.
But here's the problem: no cameras were trained on the World Trade Center at the time of the first impact. No live footage of the first plane hitting the North Tower existed until much later. The first crash was not broadcast live.
So how did Bush see it?
Either he was lying, or he had prior knowledge. His spokesman later called it a "mistaken recollection".
A mistaken recollection about the most significant event of his presidency. Right.
The Pentagon: The Day Before and the Day Of
On September 10, 2001 — one day before the attacks — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech at the Pentagon. In that speech, he admitted something extraordinary:
"According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."
$2.3 trillion. Missing. Unaccounted for. The day before the Pentagon was hit.
The following day, a plane — or something — struck the Pentagon. And the very section of the building that was hit? The area where the accounting and financial records were kept.
The missing money? The records that might have explained it? Destroyed.
Less than 48 hours after Rumsfeld admitted the Pentagon couldn't account for trillions, the evidence went up in flames. If you're a conspiracy theorist, that's not a coincidence. That's a cover-up.
No Plane, No Bodies, No Parts
The Pentagon is one of the most secure buildings on Earth. Cameras cover every inch of it. Multiple security cameras recorded the approach.
Not a single frame showing the plane hitting the Pentagon was released to the public for years. When footage was finally released in 2006, it was grainy, low-resolution, and showed nothing clearly identifiable as a Boeing 757.
The hole in the Pentagon was approximately five meters across — far too small for a 757 with a wingspan of nearly 38 meters. Conspiracy theorists pointed out that the lawn was clean after the attack, with no wing debris, no tail section, no engines.
At most plane crashes around the world, you find bodies, seats, luggage, engine parts, landing gear — debris scattered across a wide area. At the Pentagon, the official story claims the plane completely disintegrated on impact, vaporized by the heat of the explosion.
But if the plane vaporized, why were there no bodies? Why no plane parts? Why did witnesses describe a missile or a military aircraft?
And why did the government fight so hard to keep the footage secret?
The Dancing Israelis
On the morning of September 11, five men were arrested in Liberty State Park, New Jersey. They had been videotaping the attacks — and witnesses reported they were celebrating, "dancing" as the towers burned.
They worked for a company called Urban Moving Systems, which the FBI later determined was a Mossad front.
They were detained, interrogated, and eventually deported. The official explanation? They were just "celebrating" — nothing to see here.
But if five men with cameras and a Mossad cover company were positioned to film the attacks before they happened, that suggests foreknowledge. And foreknowledge suggests involvement.
The Passport and the Phone Call
We already mentioned the hijacker passport that survived the fireball. But let's add another detail.
The alleged hijackers were supposedly led by a man on dialysis in a cave who used a satellite phone and a laptop to coordinate everything.
But satellite phones in Afghanistan in 2001? Laptops in caves? The logistics are absurd. The 9/11 Commission itself found that the attacks were planned and executed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — a man who was later captured and waterboarded 183 times. The "intelligence" used to justify the Iraq War came from torture. And the CIA destroyed the tapes of those interrogations.
The evidence is gone. The "mastermind" was tortured into confession. And the American public was told to accept it.
What the 9/11 Commission Didn't Investigate
The 9/11 Commission was delayed, underfunded, and based on testimony extracted from torture.
It didn't mention Building 7. It didn't investigate who funded the attacks. It didn't examine Operation Able Danger, the military intelligence program that allegedly identified some of the hijackers before 9/11. It didn't look at the war games being conducted on the morning of 9/11 — simulations of hijacked planes flying into buildings — that were running at the exact same time as the real attacks.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney testified in secret, off the record, not under oath, and behind closed doors.
What were they hiding?
The Pattern
Two planes. Three buildings. A leaseholder with terrorism insurance. A president who "saw" a crash that wasn't broadcast. A Pentagon with $2.3 trillion missing. No plane footage. No bodies. No parts. A passport that survived a fireball. Five Israelis filming and celebrating. A commission that investigated nothing.
You don't have to have all the answers to know that the official story doesn't add up. You just have to be willing to look at the facts and ask the question that the mainstream media refuses to ask:
Who benefited?
The military-industrial complex got a blank check for endless war. The surveillance state got the PATRIOT Act. The financial crimes of Enron and others got buried in the rubble of Building 7. And the American people got a story — a story that falls apart the moment you examine it.
Two planes did not bring down three towers.
Wake up.
#9/11 #September-11-attacks #9/11-conspiracy-theories #9/11-truth-movement #World-Trade-Center #Twin-Towers #WTC-7 #Building-7 #controlled-demolition #free-fall-collapse #Larry-Silverstein #leaseholder #terrorism-insurance #insurance-fraud #double-payout #$3.55-billion #$7-billion #Enron #SEC-files #financial-records #Secret-Service #CIA #9/11-Commission #9/11-Commission-Report #Khalid-Sheikh-Mohammed #KSM #cave #laptop #satellite-phone #dialysis #box-cutters #hijackers #19-hijackers #Satam-al-Suqami #passport #fireball #George-W.-Bush #Emma-E.-Booker-Elementary #The-Pet-Goat #Sarasota #Florida #prior-knowledge #foreknowledge #Donald-Rumsfeld #Pentagon #$2.3-trillion #missing-trillions #September-10-2001 #Pentagon-accounting #Pentagon-crash #no-plane #missile #Boeing-757 #no-bodies #no-plane-parts #no-debris #security-cameras #surveillance-footage #grainy-footage #Liberty-State-Park #dancing-Israelis #Urban-Moving-Systems #Mossad #FBI #deportation #celebrating #videotaping #war-games #Operation-Able-Danger #NORAD #air-defense #stand-down #PATRIOT-Act #surveillance-state #military-industrial-complex #false-flag #inside-job #cover-up #media-complicity #torture #waterboarding #CIA-tapes #destroyed-evidence #Iraq-War #Afghanistan-War #endless-war #oil #pipeline #geopolitics #New-World-Order #deep-state #shadow-government #mainstream-media #corporate-media #propaganda #psychological-operation #psyop #limited-hangout #plausible-deniability #whistleblowers #Richard-Gage #Architects-and-Engineers-for-9/11-Truth #Scholars-for-9/11-Truth #thermite #nano-thermite #molten-steel #steel-beams #jet-fuel #office-fires #footprint #collapse-speed #symmetrical-collapse #seismic-data #dust-samples #WTC-dust #health-effects #first-responders #Giuliani #emergency-response #pull-it #demolition-terminology #insurance-clause #terrorism-clause #Silverstein-interview #PBS-documentary #fire-department-commander #building-owner #lease #Port-Authority #New-York-City #New-Jersey #Shanksville #Flight-93 #United-93 #Flight-77 #American-11 #United-175 #American-77 #hijacking #cockpit #transponder #FAA #military-response #Cheney #Secret-Service #bunker #PEOC #off-the-record #not-under-oath #closed-doors #secret-testimony #evidence-destruction #Saudi-Arabia #Saudi-hijackers #visa #immigration #flight-schools #money-trail #financing #Al-Qaeda #Osama-bin-Laden #Afghanistan #Tora-Bora #escape #CIA #Pakistan #ISI #9/11-families #victims #survivors #Ground-Zero #toxic-dust #cancer #compensation #cover-up #truth #awakening #red-pill #question-everything #do-your-own-research #never-forget #false-narrative #official-story #fairy-tale #conspiracy #conspiracy-theory #conspiracy-fact -
Chilling reading.
Trump's pushing big time on the "unbearable hell and a choking life."
It was like he had G.W. Bush working as his puppet.
And the following is separated from reality today by how many killings and maimings, how much profit for the arms industry?
"The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan ... "
#OsamaBinLaden #GeorgeWBush #11September2001 #NineEleven #Taliban #AlQaeda
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Chilling reading.
Trump's pushing big time on the "unbearable hell and a choking life."
It was like he had G.W. Bush working as his puppet.
And the following is separated from reality today by how many killings and maimings, how much profit for the arms industry?
"The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan ... "
#OsamaBinLaden #GeorgeWBush #11September2001 #NineEleven #Taliban #AlQaeda
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Chilling reading.
Trump's pushing big time on the "unbearable hell and a choking life."
It was like he had G.W. Bush working as his puppet.
And the following is separated from reality today by how many killings and maimings, how much profit for the arms industry?
"The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan ... "
#OsamaBinLaden #GeorgeWBush #11September2001 #NineEleven #Taliban #AlQaeda
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Chilling reading.
Trump's pushing big time on the "unbearable hell and a choking life."
It was like he had G.W. Bush working as his puppet.
And the following is separated from reality today by how many killings and maimings, how much profit for the arms industry?
"The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan ... "
#OsamaBinLaden #GeorgeWBush #11September2001 #NineEleven #Taliban #AlQaeda
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Chilling reading.
Trump's pushing big time on the "unbearable hell and a choking life."
It was like he had G.W. Bush working as his puppet.
And the following is separated from reality today by how many killings and maimings, how much profit for the arms industry?
"The claim came just a few weeks before the collapse of his Taliban supporters in Afghanistan ... "
#OsamaBinLaden #GeorgeWBush #11September2001 #NineEleven #Taliban #AlQaeda
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11 settembre 2001, 25 anni dopo: Cosa accadde e come cambiò il mondo
Crediti: Robert, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY-SA 2.0]; Michael Foran, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY 2.0].Immagini ritagliate, combinate e adattate graficamente per l’articolo. La presente elaborazione grafica è distribuita con licenza CC BY-SA 2.0. Martedì 11 settembre 2001, negli Stati Uniti era iniziata una giornata apparentemente normale. A New York migliaia di persone stavano raggiungendo gli uffici del World Trade Center, a Washington si lavorava al Pentagono e […]https://www.psicospace.it/11-settembre-2001-world-trade-center-cosa-accadde-come-cambio-il-mondo/
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11 settembre 2001, 25 anni dopo: Cosa accadde e come cambiò il mondo
Crediti: Robert, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY-SA 2.0]; Michael Foran, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY 2.0].Immagini ritagliate, combinate e adattate graficamente per l’articolo. La presente elaborazione grafica è distribuita con licenza CC BY-SA 2.0. Martedì 11 settembre 2001, negli Stati Uniti era iniziata una giornata apparentemente normale. A New York migliaia di persone stavano raggiungendo gli uffici del World Trade Center, a Washington si lavorava al Pentagono e […]https://www.psicospace.it/11-settembre-2001-world-trade-center-cosa-accadde-come-cambio-il-mondo/
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11 settembre 2001, 25 anni dopo: Cosa accadde e come cambiò il mondo
Crediti: Robert, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY-SA 2.0]; Michael Foran, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr, [CC BY 2.0].Immagini ritagliate, combinate e adattate graficamente per l’articolo. La presente elaborazione grafica è distribuita con licenza CC BY-SA 2.0. Martedì 11 settembre 2001, negli Stati Uniti era iniziata una giornata apparentemente normale. A New York migliaia di persone stavano raggiungendo gli uffici del World Trade Center, a Washington si lavorava al Pentagono e […]https://www.psicospace.it/11-settembre-2001-world-trade-center-cosa-accadde-come-cambio-il-mondo/
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https://www.europesays.com/ee/273285/ INTERVJUU ⟩ Endine suursaadik Washingtonis: 11. september murdis Ameerika tõusulaine #9/11 #antraks #BreakingNews #BreakingNews #EE #EerikMarmei #Eesti #EestiKeel #Estonia #Estonian #FeaturedNews #FeaturedNews #GeorgeWBush #Headlines #kaksiktornid #LatestNews #LatestNews #NATO #NewYork #News #PopulaarseimadLood #snaiper #suursaadik #SvenJürgenson #terrorirünnak #TopStories #TopStories #ÜldisedUudised #USAPresident #Uudised #ViimasedUudised #Washington
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MLB great Roger Clemens recalls George W Bush’s iconic 9/11 World Series first pitch: ‘A perfect strike’ https://www.rawchili.com/mlb/801642/ #Baseball #GeorgeWBush #MLB #NewYorkYankees #OutkickSports #September11
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MLB great Roger Clemens recalls George W Bush’s iconic 9/11 World Series first pitch: ‘A perfect strike’ https://www.rawchili.com/mlb/801642/ #Baseball #GeorgeWBush #MLB #NewYorkYankees #OutkickSports #September11
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Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas
Veinticinco años después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre, el expresidente estadounidense George W. Bush expone en Texas una quincena de lienzos inspirados en sus recuerdos de los ataques que dejaron casi 3.000 muertos. Bush, quien cumplió 80 años en julio, llevaba menos de ocho meses en la presidencia de Estados Unidos cuando ocurrieron […]
The post Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas appeared first on CR Hoy.#Atentado11Septiembre #EstadosUnidos #GeorgeWBush #Mundo
https://crhoy.com/expresidente-de-ee-uu-george-w-bush-recuerda-el-11-s-con-pinturas/
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Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas
Veinticinco años después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre, el expresidente estadounidense George W. Bush expone en Texas una quincena de lienzos inspirados en sus recuerdos de los ataques que dejaron casi 3.000 muertos. Bush, quien cumplió 80 años en julio, llevaba menos de ocho meses en la presidencia de Estados Unidos cuando ocurrieron […]
The post Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas appeared first on CR Hoy.#Atentado11Septiembre #EstadosUnidos #GeorgeWBush #Mundo
https://crhoy.com/expresidente-de-ee-uu-george-w-bush-recuerda-el-11-s-con-pinturas/
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Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas
Veinticinco años después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre, el expresidente estadounidense George W. Bush expone en Texas una quincena de lienzos inspirados en sus recuerdos de los ataques que dejaron casi 3.000 muertos. Bush, quien cumplió 80 años en julio, llevaba menos de ocho meses en la presidencia de Estados Unidos cuando ocurrieron […]
The post Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas appeared first on CR Hoy.#Atentado11Septiembre #EstadosUnidos #GeorgeWBush #Mundo
https://crhoy.com/expresidente-de-ee-uu-george-w-bush-recuerda-el-11-s-con-pinturas/
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Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas
Veinticinco años después de los atentados del 11 de septiembre, el expresidente estadounidense George W. Bush expone en Texas una quincena de lienzos inspirados en sus recuerdos de los ataques que dejaron casi 3.000 muertos. Bush, quien cumplió 80 años en julio, llevaba menos de ocho meses en la presidencia de Estados Unidos cuando ocurrieron […]
The post Expresidente de EE. UU. George W. Bush recuerda el 11-S con pinturas appeared first on CR Hoy.#Atentado11Septiembre #EstadosUnidos #GeorgeWBush #Mundo
https://crhoy.com/expresidente-de-ee-uu-george-w-bush-recuerda-el-11-s-con-pinturas/
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https://www.europesays.com/people/222421/ Trump wants to make this midterm year ‘special’ to avoid losing Republican control of Congress #AbdulElSayed #BarackObama #DonaldTrump #Elections #GeorgeWBush #JamesDavidVance #JDVance #JoeBiden #JohnFetterman #MikeJohnson #NewtGingrich #Politics #RobertGarcia #SteveScalise #StewartRhodes #ThomasEmmer #USNews #WashingtonNews #ZohranMamdani
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https://www.europesays.com/iran/286643/ Opinion: 25 years after 9/11, what has America learned? #9/11 #GeorgeWBush #Iraq #September11 #WarInIraq
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https://www.europesays.com/people/221922/ Bush reflects on 9/11 impact 25 years after terror attacks – NBC 6 South Florida #9/11 #Dallas #GeorgeWBush #POTUS #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates
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#Democracy is incompatible with unrestrained #capitalism. #Monopolies powered the #Nazi war machine 85 years ago.
General public knows that #CorporatePower is a big, rising, and terrifying problem. But regulators don't seem to know what corporate power is.
On #antitrust, the #EU buckled to #US under both #GeorgeBush (#Microsoft breakup) and #GeorgeWBush (#GE #Honeywell merger).
Now a new revolt against monopolization is brewing in #Europe.
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#Democracy is incompatible with unrestrained #capitalism. #Monopolies powered the #Nazi war machine 85 years ago.
General public knows that #CorporatePower is a big, rising, and terrifying problem. But regulators don't seem to know what corporate power is.
On #antitrust, the #EU buckled to #US under both #GeorgeBush (#Microsoft breakup) and #GeorgeWBush (#GE #Honeywell merger).
Now a new revolt against monopolization is brewing in #Europe.
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#Democracy is incompatible with unrestrained #capitalism. #Monopolies powered the #Nazi war machine 85 years ago.
General public knows that #CorporatePower is a big, rising, and terrifying problem. But regulators don't seem to know what corporate power is.
On #antitrust, the #EU buckled to #US under both #GeorgeBush (#Microsoft breakup) and #GeorgeWBush (#GE #Honeywell merger).
Now a new revolt against monopolization is brewing in #Europe.
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Seeking info: How did GW Bush get it right? How did he do quickly come to assert the Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the September 11 attacks?
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Seeking info: How did GW Bush get it right? How did he do quickly come to assert the Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the September 11 attacks?
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Seeking info: How did GW Bush get it right? How did he do quickly come to assert the Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the September 11 attacks?
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So, here's the thing…
The city, state, and federal government had ready access to equipment immediately after 9/11 that could have protected people from the toxins in the air and dramatically reduced long-term negative health effects.
Instead, they lied about the toxic air for political and economic reasons ("project resilience"! "reopen Wall Street quickly"!).
Sound familiar ( #COVID anyone?)?
#GeorgeWBush, #GeorgePataki, and #RudyGiuliani are murderers.
#September11 #NYC #FirstResponders -
So, here's the thing…
The city, state, and federal government had ready access to equipment immediately after 9/11 that could have protected people from the toxins in the air and dramatically reduced long-term negative health effects.
Instead, they lied about the toxic air for political and economic reasons ("project resilience"! "reopen Wall Street quickly"!).
Sound familiar ( #COVID anyone?)?
#GeorgeWBush, #GeorgePataki, and #RudyGiuliani are murderers.
#September11 #NYC #FirstResponders -
So, here's the thing…
The city, state, and federal government had ready access to equipment immediately after 9/11 that could have protected people from the toxins in the air and dramatically reduced long-term negative health effects.
Instead, they lied about the toxic air for political and economic reasons ("project resilience"! "reopen Wall Street quickly"!).
Sound familiar ( #COVID anyone?)?
#GeorgeWBush, #GeorgePataki, and #RudyGiuliani are murderers.
#September11 #NYC #FirstResponders -
So, here's the thing…
The city, state, and federal government had ready access to equipment immediately after 9/11 that could have protected people from the toxins in the air and dramatically reduced long-term negative health effects.
Instead, they lied about the toxic air for political and economic reasons ("project resilience"! "reopen Wall Street quickly"!).
Sound familiar ( #COVID anyone?)?
#GeorgeWBush, #GeorgePataki, and #RudyGiuliani are murderers.
#September11 #NYC #FirstResponders -
So, here's the thing…
The city, state, and federal government had ready access to equipment immediately after 9/11 that could have protected people from the toxins in the air and dramatically reduced long-term negative health effects.
Instead, they lied about the toxic air for political and economic reasons ("project resilience"! "reopen Wall Street quickly"!).
Sound familiar ( #COVID anyone?)?
#GeorgeWBush, #GeorgePataki, and #RudyGiuliani are murderers.
#September11 #NYC #FirstResponders -
ZDF heute-Nachrichten (Fragment) mit Klaus-Peter Siegloch von Dienstag, 11.09.2001, 19 Uhr
#zdf #heute #nachrichten #zdfheute #klauspetersiegloch #september11 #september11th #11september #wtc #worldtradecenter #newyork #newyorkcity #georgewbush #udovankampen #newscast #historisch #2000er #2000s #bumper #ident #tv #tvhistory #history #terror
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https://www.europesays.com/people/107831/ The Roberts Court’s Gutting of the Voting Rights Act Nears Completion #Callais #Constitution #GeorgeWBush #JamesMadison #JohnCCalhoun #JohnRoberts #LouisianaVCallais #SamuelAlito #SupremeCourt #VotingRightsAct
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Presidential legacies aren’t fixed–they can always get worse
Joe Biden’s one term as president only ended four days ago, which may not be enough time to finish closing the financial books on his White House but is not too soon for news sites to run a flurry of think pieces that attempt to assess his legacy as the 46th occupant of that office.
The two words that come to mind for me are “tragic failure.” Biden did more with less in Congress than any other president I’ve seen since I started voting, and that part of his legacy is rising across the U.S. in the form of all of the public and private projects boosted by the funding and other incentives that he set into motion. But the man who sold his first campaign as “a battle for the soul of America” did not consign Donald Trump to political oblivion and instead saw voters return him to the White House, a worst-case outcome that seemed unimaginable four years ago.
Democratic Party strategists may never stop asking what might have happened if Biden had limited himself to a single term early enough to allow for an open competition for the next candidate.
(For a longer and well-reported version of this, see my friend Anthony Zurcher’s take for the BBC.)
Biden’s legacy could look brighter four years from now if programs like the Inflation Reduction Act survive Republican attempts to cancel them and if the other damage Trump does proves repairable. Or it could look even worse–and one thing 2024 reminded me of too well is that things can always get worse.
Either way, I’m prepared for my own assessment to change as it has for most of the presidents I’ve voted for or against.
George H.W. Bush is the leading example–33 years later, I don’t quite understand why my 21-year-old self was so eager to vote against him. Overseeing the peaceful end of the Cold War was a phenomenal achievement, and his personal decency stands out compared to much of his successor’s conduct. The country would have been under a second term for him.
On the other hand, in 1992 it was not obvious what a disaster Clarence Thomas would be on the Supreme Court–in terms of both brazen corruption and his frequent unwillingness to see abuse of government power as a risk.
As for Bill Clinton, his taking the U.S. from a budget deficit to a surplus seems even more remarkable after two-plus decades of other presidents failing to get close to that performance. But the phrase “Clintonian compromise” (see “don’t ask, don’t tell”) is not a compliment for good reasons, and his having an affair with an intern was a level of disgraceful personal conduct that would now be widely seen as grounds for resignation.
You have to wonder what might have happened if Clinton had done just that, allowing Al Gore to run as an incumbent in 2000.
Instead, we got George W. Bush. He seemed awful enough at the time just in terms of launching an unnecessary war with Iraq on false evidence and ignoring the growing financial-system fractures that led to the Great Recession, and Samuel Alito has since proven to be almost as bad of a Supreme Court pick as Thomas. But W.’s record also involves saving as many as 25 million lives around the world by distributing HIV/AIDS medication in impoverished countries.
And, well, we didn’t have Donald Trump as a yardstick then.
We did, however, get Barack Obama as one. No election in my life has made me happier than his landslide win in 2008, and no president in my life except maybe Reagan has been a finer speaker for the nation than Obama was over his two terms. And while Biden’s success at getting things through Congress underlines how Obama could have done more with the sizable majorities he had through 2010, abolishing the worst cruelties of the private health-insurance system with the Affordable Care Act remains a landmark accomplishment.
But as the leader of the Democratic Party, Obama was objectively disastrous, overseeing years of wipeouts in state elections that paved the way for gerrymandering abuses of power that continue today. And he has not gotten nearly enough criticism for his feckless reactions to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brutality against his own people.
And then there is Trump. His first term was atrocious and his second seems to be off to an even worse start with such grandstanding exercises in vice signaling as an executive order claiming to rewrite the plain language of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and another EO that cites scientifically-illiterate language to deny the existence of transgender and non-binary people. Unfortunately, we have almost four more years to see how low Trump can go.
But that will only be the end of the beginning of assessing Trump’s legacy. And that may not be a quick process.
As former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee wrote in his autobiography A Good Life about how he had come to see his friend John F. Kennedy after decades of revelations about the 35th president’s rampant infidelity and other character defects: “[T]he truth about Kennedy, like all truths, emerges slowly, revealing itself more to the next generation than the last, more to the last researcher than the first.”
#BarackObama #BenBradlee #BillClinton #DonaldTrump #GeorgeHWBush #GeorgeWBush #History #JFK #JoeBiden #news #politics #presidentialLegacy #RonaldReagan
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Presidential legacies aren’t fixed–they can always get worse
Joe Biden’s one term as president only ended four days ago, which may not be enough time to finish closing the financial books on his White House but is not too soon for news sites to run a flurry of think pieces that attempt to assess his legacy as the 46th occupant of that office.
The two words that come to mind for me are “tragic failure.” Biden did more with less in Congress than any other president I’ve seen since I started voting, and that part of his legacy is rising across the U.S. in the form of all of the public and private projects boosted by the funding and other incentives that he set into motion. But the man who sold his first campaign as “a battle for the soul of America” did not consign Donald Trump to political oblivion and instead saw voters return him to the White House, a worst-case outcome that seemed unimaginable four years ago.
Democratic Party strategists may never stop asking what might have happened if Biden had limited himself to a single term early enough to allow for an open competition for the next candidate.
(For a longer and well-reported version of this, see my friend Anthony Zurcher’s take for the BBC.)
Biden’s legacy could look brighter four years from now if programs like the Inflation Reduction Act survive Republican attempts to cancel them and if the other damage Trump does proves repairable. Or it could look even worse–and one thing 2024 reminded me of too well is that things can always get worse.
Either way, I’m prepared for my own assessment to change as it has for most of the presidents I’ve voted for or against.
George H.W. Bush is the leading example–33 years later, I don’t quite understand why my 21-year-old self was so eager to vote against him. Overseeing the peaceful end of the Cold War was a phenomenal achievement, and his personal decency stands out compared to much of his successor’s conduct. The country would have been under a second term for him.
On the other hand, in 1992 it was not obvious what a disaster Clarence Thomas would be on the Supreme Court–in terms of both brazen corruption and his frequent unwillingness to see abuse of government power as a risk.
As for Bill Clinton, his taking the U.S. from a budget deficit to a surplus seems even more remarkable after two-plus decades of other presidents failing to get close to that performance. But the phrase “Clintonian compromise” (see “don’t ask, don’t tell”) is not a compliment for good reasons, and his having an affair with an intern was a level of disgraceful personal conduct that would now be widely seen as grounds for resignation.
You have to wonder what might have happened if Clinton had done just that, allowing Al Gore to run as an incumbent in 2000.
Instead, we got George W. Bush. He seemed awful enough at the time just in terms of launching an unnecessary war with Iraq on false evidence and ignoring the growing financial-system fractures that led to the Great Recession, and Samuel Alito has since proven to be almost as bad of a Supreme Court pick as Thomas. But W.’s record also involves saving as many as 25 million lives around the world by distributing HIV/AIDS medication in impoverished countries.
And, well, we didn’t have Donald Trump as a yardstick then.
We did, however, get Barack Obama as one. No election in my life has made me happier than his landslide win in 2008, and no president in my life except maybe Reagan has been a finer speaker for the nation than Obama was over his two terms. And while Biden’s success at getting things through Congress underlines how Obama could have done more with the sizable majorities he had through 2010, abolishing the worst cruelties of the private health-insurance system with the Affordable Care Act remains a landmark accomplishment.
But as the leader of the Democratic Party, Obama was objectively disastrous, overseeing years of wipeouts in state elections that paved the way for gerrymandering abuses of power that continue today. And he has not gotten nearly enough criticism for his feckless reactions to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brutality against his own people.
And then there is Trump. His first term was atrocious and his second seems to be off to an even worse start with such grandstanding exercises in vice signaling as an executive order claiming to rewrite the plain language of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and another EO that cites scientifically-illiterate language to deny the existence of transgender and non-binary people. Unfortunately, we have almost four more years to see how low Trump can go.
But that will only be the end of the beginning of assessing Trump’s legacy. And that may not be a quick process.
As former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee wrote in his autobiography A Good Life about how he had come to see his friend John F. Kennedy after decades of revelations about the 35th president’s rampant infidelity and other character defects: “[T]he truth about Kennedy, like all truths, emerges slowly, revealing itself more to the next generation than the last, more to the last researcher than the first.”
#BarackObama #BenBradlee #BillClinton #DonaldTrump #GeorgeHWBush #GeorgeWBush #History #JFK #JoeBiden #news #politics #presidentialLegacy #RonaldReagan
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Presidential legacies aren’t fixed–they can always get worse
Joe Biden’s one term as president only ended four days ago, which may not be enough time to finish closing the financial books on his White House but is not too soon for news sites to run a flurry of think pieces that attempt to assess his legacy as the 46th occupant of that office.
The two words that come to mind for me are “tragic failure.” Biden did more with less in Congress than any other president I’ve seen since I started voting, and that part of his legacy is rising across the U.S. in the form of all of the public and private projects boosted by the funding and other incentives that he set into motion. But the man who sold his first campaign as “a battle for the soul of America” did not consign Donald Trump to political oblivion and instead saw voters return him to the White House, a worst-case outcome that seemed unimaginable four years ago.
Democratic Party strategists may never stop asking what might have happened if Biden had limited himself to a single term early enough to allow for an open competition for the next candidate.
(For a longer and well-reported version of this, see my friend Anthony Zurcher’s take for the BBC.)
Biden’s legacy could look brighter four years from now if programs like the Inflation Reduction Act survive Republican attempts to cancel them and if the other damage Trump does proves repairable. Or it could look even worse–and one thing 2024 reminded me of too well is that things can always get worse.
Either way, I’m prepared for my own assessment to change as it has for most of the presidents I’ve voted for or against.
George H.W. Bush is the leading example–33 years later, I don’t quite understand why my 21-year-old self was so eager to vote against him. Overseeing the peaceful end of the Cold War was a phenomenal achievement, and his personal decency stands out compared to much of his successor’s conduct. The country would have been under a second term for him.
On the other hand, in 1992 it was not obvious what a disaster Clarence Thomas would be on the Supreme Court–in terms of both brazen corruption and his frequent unwillingness to see abuse of government power as a risk.
As for Bill Clinton, his taking the U.S. from a budget deficit to a surplus seems even more remarkable after two-plus decades of other presidents failing to get close to that performance. But the phrase “Clintonian compromise” (see “don’t ask, don’t tell”) is not a compliment for good reasons, and his having an affair with an intern was a level of disgraceful personal conduct that would now be widely seen as grounds for resignation.
You have to wonder what might have happened if Clinton had done just that, allowing Al Gore to run as an incumbent in 2000.
Instead, we got George W. Bush. He seemed awful enough at the time just in terms of launching an unnecessary war with Iraq on false evidence and ignoring the growing financial-system fractures that led to the Great Recession, and Samuel Alito has since proven to be almost as bad of a Supreme Court pick as Thomas. But W.’s record also involves saving as many as 25 million lives around the world by distributing HIV/AIDS medication in impoverished countries.
And, well, we didn’t have Donald Trump as a yardstick then.
We did, however, get Barack Obama as one. No election in my life has made me happier than his landslide win in 2008, and no president in my life except maybe Reagan has been a finer speaker for the nation than Obama was over his two terms. And while Biden’s success at getting things through Congress underlines how Obama could have done more with the sizable majorities he had through 2010, abolishing the worst cruelties of the private health-insurance system with the Affordable Care Act remains a landmark accomplishment.
But as the leader of the Democratic Party, Obama was objectively disastrous, overseeing years of wipeouts in state elections that paved the way for gerrymandering abuses of power that continue today. And he has not gotten nearly enough criticism for his feckless reactions to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brutality against his own people.
And then there is Trump. His first term was atrocious and his second seems to be off to an even worse start with such grandstanding exercises in vice signaling as an executive order claiming to rewrite the plain language of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and another EO that cites scientifically-illiterate language to deny the existence of transgender and non-binary people. Unfortunately, we have almost four more years to see how low Trump can go.
But that will only be the end of the beginning of assessing Trump’s legacy. And that may not be a quick process.
As former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee wrote in his autobiography A Good Life about how he had come to see his friend John F. Kennedy after decades of revelations about the 35th president’s rampant infidelity and other character defects: “[T]he truth about Kennedy, like all truths, emerges slowly, revealing itself more to the next generation than the last, more to the last researcher than the first.”
#BarackObama #BenBradlee #BillClinton #DonaldTrump #GeorgeHWBush #GeorgeWBush #History #JFK #JoeBiden #news #politics #presidentialLegacy #RonaldReagan
-
Presidential legacies aren’t fixed–they can always get worse
Joe Biden’s one term as president only ended four days ago, which may not be enough time to finish closing the financial books on his White House but is not too soon for news sites to run a flurry of think pieces that attempt to assess his legacy as the 46th occupant of that office.
The two words that come to mind for me are “tragic failure.” Biden did more with less in Congress than any other president I’ve seen since I started voting, and that part of his legacy is rising across the U.S. in the form of all of the public and private projects boosted by the funding and other incentives that he set into motion. But the man who sold his first campaign as “a battle for the soul of America” did not consign Donald Trump to political oblivion and instead saw voters return him to the White House, a worst-case outcome that seemed unimaginable four years ago.
Democratic Party strategists may never stop asking what might have happened if Biden had limited himself to a single term early enough to allow for an open competition for the next candidate.
(For a longer and well-reported version of this, see my friend Anthony Zurcher’s take for the BBC.)
Biden’s legacy could look brighter four years from now if programs like the Inflation Reduction Act survive Republican attempts to cancel them and if the other damage Trump does proves repairable. Or it could look even worse–and one thing 2024 reminded me of too well is that things can always get worse.
Either way, I’m prepared for my own assessment to change as it has for most of the presidents I’ve voted for or against.
George H.W. Bush is the leading example–33 years later, I don’t quite understand why my 21-year-old self was so eager to vote against him. Overseeing the peaceful end of the Cold War was a phenomenal achievement, and his personal decency stands out compared to much of his successor’s conduct. The country would have been under a second term for him.
On the other hand, in 1992 it was not obvious what a disaster Clarence Thomas would be on the Supreme Court–in terms of both brazen corruption and his frequent unwillingness to see abuse of government power as a risk.
As for Bill Clinton, his taking the U.S. from a budget deficit to a surplus seems even more remarkable after two-plus decades of other presidents failing to get close to that performance. But the phrase “Clintonian compromise” (see “don’t ask, don’t tell”) is not a compliment for good reasons, and his having an affair with an intern was a level of disgraceful personal conduct that would now be widely seen as grounds for resignation.
You have to wonder what might have happened if Clinton had done just that, allowing Al Gore to run as an incumbent in 2000.
Instead, we got George W. Bush. He seemed awful enough at the time just in terms of launching an unnecessary war with Iraq on false evidence and ignoring the growing financial-system fractures that led to the Great Recession, and Samuel Alito has since proven to be almost as bad of a Supreme Court pick as Thomas. But W.’s record also involves saving as many as 25 million lives around the world by distributing HIV/AIDS medication in impoverished countries.
And, well, we didn’t have Donald Trump as a yardstick then.
We did, however, get Barack Obama as one. No election in my life has made me happier than his landslide win in 2008, and no president in my life except maybe Reagan has been a finer speaker for the nation than Obama was over his two terms. And while Biden’s success at getting things through Congress underlines how Obama could have done more with the sizable majorities he had through 2010, abolishing the worst cruelties of the private health-insurance system with the Affordable Care Act remains a landmark accomplishment.
But as the leader of the Democratic Party, Obama was objectively disastrous, overseeing years of wipeouts in state elections that paved the way for gerrymandering abuses of power that continue today. And he has not gotten nearly enough criticism for his feckless reactions to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brutality against his own people.
And then there is Trump. His first term was atrocious and his second seems to be off to an even worse start with such grandstanding exercises in vice signaling as an executive order claiming to rewrite the plain language of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and another EO that cites scientifically-illiterate language to deny the existence of transgender and non-binary people. Unfortunately, we have almost four more years to see how low Trump can go.
But that will only be the end of the beginning of assessing Trump’s legacy. And that may not be a quick process.
As former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee wrote in his autobiography A Good Life about how he had come to see his friend John F. Kennedy after decades of revelations about the 35th president’s rampant infidelity and other character defects: “[T]he truth about Kennedy, like all truths, emerges slowly, revealing itself more to the next generation than the last, more to the last researcher than the first.”
#BarackObama #BenBradlee #BillClinton #DonaldTrump #GeorgeHWBush #GeorgeWBush #History #JFK #JoeBiden #news #politics #presidentialLegacy #RonaldReagan